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The Shepherd and the Star - Part III
The captain re-emerged into the cockpit and the pilot switched the internal communications back on. He picked up the radio and spoke loud and clear. The Commander had finished fixing herself into the cables of the battle drone before she positioned herself appropriately and pulled the small console towards herself then used it to close the small machine up, fastening herself within. * ‘I don’t know why they want you down there, commander, but good luck from here on. We’ll probably never meet again.’ Vahagnae tried his best to sound comforting ‘Godspeed and all of that, I just hope whatever you do that you do it morally, maybe even with a bit of honour, maybe, someday...You have ten seconds before we brush against the atmosphere. You know the score. Vahagnae out.’ She shook off his poor advice, grew impatient and counted the seconds. The freighter glided down into close orbit with its arched beak facing up like a shuttle coming in to land as two huge plated doors slid open on its underside, revealing the empty hangar deck and the drone fixed within. The Commander closed her eyes and reached her arms up, and then clutched tightly two grips connected to a pair of internal handle bars, which ultimately interiorly led back down to the small drone’s engines. She thought of it like a motorcycle of the stars, a motorcycle which travelled one way and one way only. Down. Unlike most other space craft, battle drones weren’t designed to resist gravity. They were designed to fall and, with a little luck, survive. As the faint wind of low orbit overflowed through the hangar, the restraints keeping the drone in place began to sway dangerously. The freighter leant to one side as it skidded across the thin icy particles before the restraints detached and the drone dropped, as anticipated, down at soaring velocity and through the stream of frost specks, splashing them out into space as it punctured through. The freighter fought gravity as per usual and rose out of Europa’s reach as the Commander descended through the atmosphere, using the grips to yank the drone from side to side as it continued to plummet, conquering any recorded speed limit. The drone’s tiny back engines released a surge of ruby-coloured energy which spilled like a jumble of feral serpents across the glittery night sky. The drone swung and spun upside down as the Commander fought to keep control, which was difficult given that the tides of the moon’s gravity were making her slam around violently in the vessel’s confined manacles. The ground seemed to be approaching faster than expected. She squeezed the grips as strongly as possible and the back engines suddenly reversed their power, firing back through the thin piping of the drone aggressively hurling itself from the bottom-side of the vehicle. It spun back into its initial pose and she pulled it back, before she heard the sound of ill-tempered winds silence beneath the echo of a huge slam. Her back bumped against the ceiling of the vessel, before it opened and her restraints snapped off, letting her fall back onto the cold floor of a desolate moon. She took the opportunity to catch her breath before sitting straight and turning up the brightness dial beside her visor so she could see. Because she considered fate to be a total bitch, the drone had landed spectacularly on the edge of one of the cliffs which Vahagnae warned her about, the ones which could crumble if exposed to such a crash-from-orbit event. She pulled onto the latch of the drone and helped herself up, before shaking off her body tremors and walking, like a suicidal drunk, to the Cliffside, where she tossed a glare over the edge. A short eternity passed before she shook her head with an enormous amount of displeasure, and heard something crack the ice beneath her. A huge metal fist smashed up from within the cliff and blasted up through the frosty air, revealing it to be one end of a great rusty tentacle. The Commander turned and spared a hand to direct her pistol up at the creature as the fist uncoiled and torchlight came over her. Much to her bewilderment, a sharp female voice accompanied it. * ‘Commander, you’re here sooner than I expected.’ * ‘It’s not a good idea punching holes in the ice; this world isn’t strong enough to hold it. It’ll collapse like an iced up lake the morning after!’ the Commander warned. * ‘Don’t worry, I’m in control. The mining facility was built to last, which subsequently meant that all of its toys could be used to keep the surface in good shape. I can flip a switch and all cliffs across the moon will cave in on themselves, and you’ve heard of my exploits. All agents have.’ * ‘Who are you, agent?’ she commanded ‘the one I’m here to meet?’ * ‘Yeah, and hold on, I’ll help you down.’ The tentacle curled and the claw leant forward strangely, before subtly snatching the Commander from the ice and constricting her tightly, but not perilously. * ‘Hey!’ she yelled through her helmet ‘Let me g-...’ At a speed no human should ever be exposed to without a combat suit, the tentacle retracted and pulled her back down the fresh hole it had punched into existence. The Commander was being pulled through the very bowels of a vast iced-up Cliffside, and she was dreadfully aware of the fact that she was being pulled through the very bowels of a vast iced-up Cliffside, which only added to her disorientation and disbelief. Agents weren’t supposed to show fear of any kind, but she figured to hell with it and wailed all of the way down. She didn’t quite know what happened when she reached the bottom, she just remembered being released by the tentacle and slamming at full force into an extremely solid wall. Even though she was safely secured within a combat suit, the rest remained blurred. It took a few minutes for her to stand again, but when she did she was more determined than ever. It was the nanobots in her bloodstream; they were perfect for releasing certain useful toxins into her system for recovery purposes. Without her neural implants, she’d be very high, but the two technologies entirely balanced each other out. She shook her head until the dizziness overtook the loss of nerve, before she turned around with her hand on the wall and faced a tightly packed room of scientists and security monitors, all of whom were staring at her with wide eyes. * ‘That hurt...’ became her immediate answer ‘can I just ask...who was the wise ass who had me pulled through the very bowels of a vast iced-up Cliffside, and had me then slammed at high velocity into this wall?’ No one raised their hand. * ‘Okay, I guess I’ll just kill everyone then...’ she struggled to raise her pistol, before an old man in a suit stepped in from one side and pressed her weapon down. * ‘That won’t be necessary, commander. I’m Sergeant Daniels with UA, chief of this facility.’ He smiled. * ‘I thought this ‘facility’ was long abandoned...’ she almost fell and caught her balance. * ‘It was, by the miners of old. By abandoned we mean that we forced them out, and then moved in ourselves. I mean it’s the perfect place for a covert establishment, especially for one as important as this. That machine that brought you was one of the old mining droids they left behind, our boys like playing with. Heh, we call them farmers sometimes, this old lot. I guess the General herself got ahole of the controls and, well, there you go.’ He tried to be funny, but he wasn’t funny ‘Ahem, anyway, um, allow me to take you to the General. She’s waiting just upstairs.’ * ‘...Cud.’ The commander said instead of ‘good’, she desperately needed to lie down and rest. * ‘Right this way, commander.’ Daniels held her arm and helped her out of the room ‘J-Just through here.’ * ‘Hup.’ She used as an alternative to ‘yep’. She sensed that she may need a translator for the meeting which was about to take place since her body was no longer equipped to provide a normal conversation ‘How...How did this lot get d-down here anyway, I mean...You should like...have a lift, or something.’ * ‘I’m sure you saw how damaged the surface is from orbit, commander, we’re a messy bunch but we get the job done.’ He verified ‘Now come on. We’re recovering your drone as we speak, don’t fret about that.’ Eventually she was seated with her head face down on the table and her helmet on the floor beside her. * ‘Commander? Commander?’ a powerful female voice, the same from the mining droid, woke her up. She fell back into her seat and allowed a gaze to shoot across the table and to another agent in a combat suit stood on the opposite side. Her hair was blonde and tied neatly behind her head, and large brown eyes resided beneath. She tilted her face to the still unsettled Commander. * ‘...Commande-...’ * ‘-What?’ she said, annoyed ‘General? You’re the General?’ * ‘I am.’ * ‘I don’t care what your authority is, that hurt like hell-...’ she began a rant. * ‘-Just a little fun, commander, nothing you couldn’t handle.’ The General grinned. * ‘You...You don’t act like an agent. Are you even from the Agency at all?’ the Commander asked and managed to pull herself up straight. * ‘Yes, but no to your first question. I don’t act like a normal agent, but then neither do you. We both missed out NI updates, and we’re both still alive. Why is that, do you think?’ she put forward an astounding question. * ‘What are you talking about?’ The Commander shook her head. * ‘The Agency is probably the most powerful organisation on Earth and all of her colonies, and they’re subsequently merciless because of that. There’s no chance that they aren’t aware of our mutual failures to be perfect emotionless agents, that’s just wishful thinking, but we’re still here. They haven’t come for us. Not yet. For the first time in history, the Agency isn’t going with their natural flow.’ She explained. * ‘...That’s...wrong. You’re wrong. I’m not malfunctioning.’ The Commander lied. * ‘You even speak as though you’re a machine, but you’re just as human as me, even more so perhaps. Tell me, Commander, what you dream?’ the General hit a nerve. * ‘...I don’t dream. Dreaming implies a desire for something. I’m an agent, General. So are you, but you are malfunctioning. You’re corrupt, and you’re trying to corrupt me. Stop.’ The Commander ordered. * ‘Alright look, listen, Commander. I know you’ve been dreaming. I hacked the neural net and saw into your subconscious, way before the terraformation. If you turn me in, I’ll turn you in, and we can both die together. Sound good?’ she proposed ‘Or maybe, just maybe, just a little bit, you can shut up and let me tell you what I’m trying to tell you, because you came here for a mission, and a mission I have for you, for us. A mission that could put the Agency back in its place, and maybe give humanity the mercy we both know she deserves.’ * ‘...Go on.’ The Commander sighed and surrendered. She watched as the General stood up straight and folded her arms. * ‘Good. This facility was made by the United Alliance as a means to monitor asteroids and other natural resources of crap throughout the system, as well as anything heading towards Earth. Since anything dangerous heading towards Earth is a rare event, this base has become somewhat...secluded. The UA have long since lost interest in any of the goings-on here and, so far, the Agency has no need to come here, save for sending agents in to murder us, which hasn’t happened yet, and I’ve been here a short while. But ironically, after all of this has come to pass, this facility did discover something quite amazing, just last week actually. Something of a rare event itself. Something which could change the UA forever, Commander.’ * ‘Get to the point, General. My head is really hurting.’ She rested her chin in her hand. * ‘Commander, there’s an alien space ship on the edge of the system.’ There was a long silence in which the Commander reflected on the magnitude of the situation. * ‘...What?’ she leant forward. * ‘An alien spacecraft of alien design carrying alien technology, drifting harmlessly across the brim of the solar system. The Agency doesn’t know about it yet, and neither does the UA.’ The General said and made a wave with her fingers as she described ‘drifting’. * ‘...Alien?’ * ‘Alien. As in ‘not from Earth’ Alien’ she smiled ‘it’s like a gift from god, at least for two agents who have lost their place in the universe.’ * ‘You didn’t...You didn’t mention anything about any life forms aboard though.’ The Commander brought up. * ‘We have yet to find life signs via the scan but so far, it looks abandoned. Its course seems sporadic, random, just not....going anywhere, which is the most important thing. Our predictions suggest that it’s adrift, and that for some reason its crew left and never decided to come back for it. It’s ours for the taking, Commander.’ The General continued. * ‘...We’re assassins-...’ she began. * ‘-No no, we’re more than that now and you know it. We’re full of emotions, and dreams, and all of that human stuff we were denied by the Agency. Think about revenge, and the emotion accompanying it will soon come to you. The Agency may have been set up for moral causes, but I for one strive to be more now. What about you? The course of the ship is important because our predictions also suggest that she’ll just remain on the brim of the system, she’s not accustom to the sun’s gravity and she’s not seduced by it like everything else. We need to take this opportunity, Commander, and we need to board that ship and detain it before it drifts away and disappears forever! We can use it as a weapon, we can become more than the Agency intended and we can make Earth a better, more sufficient place. Can you not... ‘taste’ the ambition? It’s a perfect plan, we can reveal the existence of the Agency and-...’ the General’s preach was interrupted prematurely. * ‘-That would cause chaos. If the people knew who were really out there. It’s everything the Agency was set up to prevent in the first place. Everyone will try to find someone to blame, and we fall into just another Rapture...and as a consequence, another Agency will replace the old one-...’ * ‘-We’ve got to try!’ the General slammed the desk, and made the Commander jump ‘Don’t you see? The system is wrong! It’s immoral, corrupt and most of all mainly people who are killed each day are killed BY the Agency for ‘potentially’ being some kind of a threat to their invisible regime! It’s ludicrous that anyone with a conscience can condone it! But we’re agents! We’ve experienced the madness that the world remains oblivious too. Humanity is being controlled by tyrants in suits and murderers walk amongst the innocent. Murderers like us! Don’t be ignorant of your humanity! EMBRACE IT.’ * ‘I’m going to eliminate you once I can move, just so that you are aware...’ the Commander was compelled by her neural implants to say ‘...because of...libert...because...’ * ‘Fight it, commander.’ * ‘...General.’ * ‘Fight it.’ in Part IV